With the advent and explosion of the Internet and the World Wide Web (“Web” or “WWW”), a large number of Internet Web sites have become available through which consumers can purchase a wide variety of goods and services. For instance, Internet Web sites are currently available at which consumers can purchase home appliances, furniture, compact disks, video tapes, and virtually every other available product. Similarly, Internet Web sites are currently available at which consumers can avail themselves of services, such as apartment finding services, home grocery delivery services, and a plethora of other types of services.
Web sites have also been created for providing legal, financial, and insurance products. For instance, Web sites are currently available that provide services related to the insurance industry, like for receiving a premium quotation for an insurance policy. While Web sites have been created that provide some level of insurance information, all of the current insurance-related Web sites suffer from a number of serious drawbacks.
The main drawback of current Internet Web sites providing insurance information is that these Web sites do not completely re-intermediate insurance agents into the on-line sales process. Traditionally, insurance policies have been sold through insurance agents. Insurance agents may be employed by an insurance company, or they may operate independently. Insurance companies have traditionally relied on insurance agents to be a first point of contact with customers and to provide extra value to the insurance policies provided by the insurance companies. However, current Internet Web sites that provide insurance products sell insurance policies directly to the consumer. These Web sites may pay a commission to an agent for the sale, but the insurance companies that operate such sites retain control over the customer's account and do not release this control to the selling agent.
Paying insurance agents a commission for an on-line sale of an insurance policy without releasing control of the customer's account to the agent may be a wise short-term strategy for an insurance company. However, in the long-term, this strategy may have many drawbacks. For instance, customers may not receive the level of personalized service and value they once received, because the insurance agent may be unmotivated to provide additional service if they will not receive an additional commission. For these and other reasons, selling insurance policies directly to consumers through an Internet Web site without completely re-intermediating the insurance agent by providing complete control over the customer to the agent may not be an effective business model.
Another drawback of current Internet Web sites providing insurance information is that the current sites do not provide bindable insurance quotations. If a customer receives a premium quotation from one of the current sites, typically they must receive paperwork in the mail from the insurance company before the policy is actually binding to the insurance company. For consumers, this means that they may have to wait to get a meaningful binding quotation, and therefore, that the quotation provided at the Web site cannot be relied upon contractually. A further drawback of current Internet Web sites providing insurance information is in the delivery of the actual insurance policies. Current insurance Web sites deliver insurance policies and accompanying documentation in a paper form. This also requires customers to wait for delivery of the paper insurance policy in the mail.
Accordingly, in light of the above problems, there is a need for a method and system for providing insurance policies via a computing network that re-intermediates insurance agents into the policy sales and service process. There is a further need for a method and system for providing insurance policies that provides an immediate bindable insurance policy premium quotation to the consumer. Furthermore, there is a need for a method and system for providing insurance policies that provides insurance policies and any accompanying documentation in an electronic format.